I don't get it

I don't understand the point of this story: Canadian snowbirds without passports won't get stuck in U.S., says Chertoff
Well, of course not. It's not up to Chertoff to decide whether a Canadian can come home to Canada without a passport -- that's up to Canada Customs.
But no snowbird should expect to be exempt from the US rules -- the excuse that they were just flying home briefly and now want to fly back to the US isn't going to cut it.

I read the news today...

Well, I had a positively brilliant post just about ready to go, including environmental stuff with a seque to Abu Gonzales, when my browser died and took my post with it.
So just go read Saskboy instead -- his post is better than what I wrote anyway...

Maps of war

Check out this fascinating website: Maps of War which I found out about at Corrente Wire.

Great line of the day

Ken Levine:

. . . should players who are suspected of illegally enhancing their performance be denied entrance into the hallowed hall? Does this mean we keep out Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmiero, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Jason Grimsley?
Just think, if the Rock n’ Roll Hall-of-Fame had a drug restriction its only members would be Debby Boone and the Singing Nun.

Emphasis mine. And I'm not so sure about Debby.
Then Levin continues into this terrific rant:

. . . Since Hall-of-Famer, Ty Cobb first captured the stolen base crown by spiking infielders at second base, players and teams have always looked for an edge. They steal signs, they cork bats, juice balls, tilt foul lines, hire a midget, water down basepaths, wear reflective jewelry, play “Pop Goes the Weasel” and show fountains spouting on Diamondvision Boards when Viagra spokesman, Rafael Palmiero comes to the plate. I’m not saying I condone it (well…maybe the last example) but that’s just part of the game. Baseball is built on tradition and that’s one of them.
Gaylord Perry’s in the Hall-of-Fame. He never threw a pitch that didn’t spray the first four rows of the grandstands . . .

Read the whole thing.

Great line of the day

From August J. Pollak:

It's totally unfair to address someone's personal life when it pertains to a political debate unless they work undercover at the CIA.

Check out the new links

I finally did some updating on my sidebar -- deleted some old links, and added more to my "new links" list.
UPDATE: Also, I just did some Comment cleanup, too. Buh-bye "James Halifax" AKA "sirBruce" and "Carla" AKA "ootpootfizzfizz" -- I don't like astroturfing, nor will I tolerate being called names. Start your own blog, and you can call me whatever you want.

A yarn tale (sock, that is)

I love the Internets.
Could you have ever guessed that yarn fans and knitting fanatics have connected on-line and form clubs for the knitting of socks and for the purchsing of the specialized yarn which is used there-for? Well, one bank didn't (guess, that is) -- read all about it here (h/t The Sideshow).

"Controversy"

Sunday's Doonesbury - brilliant:

Upchucking the koolaid

Glenn Greenwald has a great post quoting conservative columnist Rod Dreher about how he grew up while watching Bush's speech:

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country.

Yes, nothing like a stupid war to convince Americans that the hippies were right!
Greenwald also links to Mahablog describing how we are all influenced, perhaps overly so, by the political events of our teenage years in determining whether we are "liberal" or "conservative".
Too often, I think, we pick one point of view when we are young, then we spend the rest of our lives editing reality to fit.
Easier, I guess, or more comfortable, or something.
But sometimes, as Dreher has now realized, there is a limit to how much we can ignore, how far we can stretch. Sometimes, reality just crashes through.
The political experience of Iraq may well produce a new generation of Americans who will rediscover "liberalism".
Maybe they'll start singing Kumbaya and wearing flowers in their hair. Maybe they'll even start supporting health insurance.
And when I think about my own background and the political events which shaped me, I guess one of the key events in my young life was the Doctor's Strike in 1962, which showed me the importance of people acting together to implement what we believe in. When an aroused public supports something as much as we supported Medicare in 1962, well then, we shall overcome. I saw it happen and I have never forgotten it.

Fair, the "F-word"

Western farmers to vote in federal barley plebiscite:

Federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl . . . wants to ensure the question is fair. "There are a bunch of things you could say that could skew the question and I think everybody understands that if you want this to be legitimate, which I do, then you have to ask an unbiased question," Strahl said in a telephone interview. "You do that by making sure there aren't words like 'freedom' in there and 'getting out of the yoke.' "

So I guess neither "Do you want to throw off the shackles of a socialist marketing scheme ..." or "Do you want to watch your family starve because no company will give you a decent price for your grain ...." will do.

Oh, what a lovely war?

Robert Parry describes the broader Middle East war which he thinks the Bush administration is trying to start:

. . . Bush announced other steps that could be interpreted as building a military infrastructure for a regional war or at least for air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities . . .
Militarily, a second aircraft carrier strike force would do little to interdict arms smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border. Similarly, Patriot anti-missile batteries would be of no use in defeating lightly armed insurgent forces and militias inside Iraq.
However, both deployments would be useful to deter – or defend against – retaliatory missile strikes from Iran if the Israelis or the United States bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or stage military raids inside Iranian territory.
Iran has a relatively sophisticated arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles. Those short-range missiles could be fired at U.S. bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. The medium-range missiles could conceivably hit Tel Aviv.
Not only could Patriot missiles be used to knock down Iranian missiles while they’re heading toward their targets, but the fearsome firepower of two aircraft carrier strike forces could deter any Iranian retaliatory strike following a U.S. or Israeli attack.
In other words, the deployments would fit with Israel or the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear sites and then trying to tamp down any Iranian response.
Another danger to American interests, however, would be pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq seeking revenge against U.S. troops. If that were to happen, Bush’s escalation of troop levels in Iraq would make sense as a way to protect the Green Zone and other sensitive targets.
So, Bush’s actions and rhetoric over the past several weeks continue to mesh with a scenario for a wider regional war . . .

And in the meantime, the Patriot air missile defense units are mobilized and USS F-16's have arrived at the Incirlik Air base in southern Turkey.
My question is this, is the rest of the world going to tell the Bush administration to stop?
Or are we going to stand around twiddling our thumbs while Bush starts a devastating war?

Signs and whispers

One thing to remember with the Bush administration is that things are always worse than they first appear.
It feels paranoid to read between the lines of every Bush speech, trying to parse deeper meanings out of words and syllables and sentence fragments. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't really out to get you.
Like Digby, I sorta dozed off during Bush's speech tonight. But reading the tea leaves, there are a few indications of what the future may hold.
Here's one: Bush blamed "too many restrictions on the troops" for the US lack of success in Baghdad so far -- funny, I never heard American troops being criticized before for their restraint. But this is Operation Big Swinging Dick, and everyone's Inner Cheney now gets to kick ass. Expect more air strikes killing more civilians, more cluster bombs, more door-kicking, more shoot-first-never-ask-questions-at-all.
And here's another one: Iraqi forces will be "going door to door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents". Now these Iraqi forces are going to be Kurdish troops, so we'll have Kurds kicking in the doors of both Sunnis and Shiites. That oughta calm things down, yes siree.
And then there is this one: what's with that part of the speech about providing Patriot Missile defense systems to "our friends and allies" -- like maybe Israel? Saudi Arabia? Who is going to be firing those Patriot missiles toward the friends & allies anyway? Is this why Saudi Arabia summoned Cheney in December, to demand protection during war with Iran?
And Bush apparently still thinks America is losing the war because of those gosh-darn 'outside agitators' from Syria and Iran. I don't know quite what to make of this -- do Bush and Cheney really think they can convince America that their problems in Iraq are the fault of Syria and Iran? Do they think they can gin up another war based on "darkened" intelligence and the American people will go along with it again?
Well, maybe.
But here are the whispers. Maybe this time America won't drink the Koolaid. For the very first time ever tonight, after Bush's speech, I heard David Gregory of MSNBC report on the anti-war protestors at the White House. They've been there for years, but the press just never mentioned them before. And after five years of refusing to mention any Bush administration lies, the Associated Press actually has a story posted tonight titled Bush rhetoric hard to square with facts.
Matthew Yglesias writes:

... to sum up, neither the American military nor the American congress nor the American people nor the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi public wants an American military escalation. Naturally, we're getting one.

I wonder if America now shares his skepticism?
UPDATE: Dave at Galloping Beaver finds some more stuff which the Bush administration hoped would stay hidden a little longer.

Blizzard

We drove home in this. Luckily, my husband is a great driver -- there were several times when we couldn't see the front end of the car, but we had to keep going because otherwise the people behind would have hit us. A 15 minute drive took 2 hours.
The newspaper says this blizzard is one of worst ever and its certainly the worst I've ever seen -- and I 've lived here for most of the last 57 years.
I thought it was completely irresponsible for the highways workers to strike -- this could have killed innocent people. They came to their senses and went back yesterday, just in time for today's blizzard.

Great line of the day

Stephen Colbert about Bill O'Reilly:

"It is an honor to speak face-to-face with a broadcasting legend, and I feel the same way about Mr. O'Reilly."

"Little Mosque" is good

Little Mosque on the Prairie -- I liked it, a lot. Mercy isn't quite Dog River, not yet anyway, but I think it will come close.
And the Mayor of Dog River showed up in the restaurant, too.
Besides, anything that Margaret Wente doesn't like is, by definition, must-see TV.